Developer Spotlight: JUICY BEAST

So …. You’ve stormed the tower and rescued the princesses, but do you know the legend of Juicy Beast, developer of Knightmare Tower? General Manager/Artistic Director Yowan Langlais gives the lowdown on Coffee addition, NERF Fights, and what game the team is tinkering on next for OUYA.

How Yowan Overcame Color Blindness In The World Of Artistic Direction?
I didn’t! The guys (especially Alex) often point out my color mistakes, like “Hmm, is it normal that your yellow button is green?” and stuff like that. I’m far from being 100% colorblind and I usually get my stuff right, but I still do some mistakes once in awhile. I like to think it makes me special, am I right? Am I? Guys? Guys…?

How Many Cups Of Coffee Does The Team Drinks A Day?
Around 2 or 3, but that’ just me (Yowan). Alex and JP both hate coffee, and Dominique only drinks one in the morning. I feel like a coffee addict in here, and I don’t drink that much!

Arcade Game That Ate The Most Quarters?
I don’t know for the others, but personally, it’s got to be the Jurassic Park arcade game. I think we’re all too young to have played the old classics on arcade machines, but I still played a lot of that game. Growing up, I came to realise it wasn’t that good of a game, but I just loved the fact you had to “enter” the thing to play it. It’s all about immersion!

Best Concert Ever Attended?
We all listen to pretty different music, but one time, the guys took me to a hardcore metal concert for my birthday. It was awesome!

Pie vs Cake?
Hmm, I’d say cake, since we always bring a cake for each other’s birthday, but I’m pretty sure everyone loves pie as well (so many birthday references)!

Longest Development Crunch?
Without sleep, I’d say it’s during a game jam (48 hours straight). Other than that, it’s probably for Knightmare Tower’s OUYA release. Alex was crunching a lot making miracles to get the game working before the OUYA release date, while Dominique and I crunched on marketing (video trailer, press kit, screenshots, GDC meetings, etc). It was pretty intense since half the team stayed at the office to finish the game while the other half went to GDC to promote it. We kind of decided to attend GDC at the last minute, so we had a lot of promo material to do in a short amount of time, which is not usually the case.

Favorite Comic Book Series?
Again, it’s different for everyone, but the recurring titles are Walking Dead, Fringe, Naruto and Dexter. These are the ones we talked about the most in the office!

Biggest Office Nerf fight?
One Christmas, Alex bought each of us a small Nerf gun and brought his own, huge, automatic gun. We ended up splitting the office in two, making barricades with our chairs and shooting each other in the face like you would normally do.

After getting our butt kicked by Alex’s gun, we decided to simply shoot the arrows with our hands, since it was way faster than reloading a single shot gun. Strangely, we developed a special technique to shoot faster and stronger with our hands than with our guns! Since that day, our hands are considered weapons and we no longer need the guns *eyes opened wide with a psycho look on our face*.

Best Work Stress Release?
I’d say sports (we play volleyball, soccer, hockey and sometimes badminton), but we also like playing games at home. A lot of people think it’s weird to play games after a day spent on game development, but it’s totally different. We don’t really “play” our games when we make them. The “playtime” usually comes near the end of production, when we try to let go of our dev eyes and use our player eyes instead! So yeah, uh, sports.

What’s Next For OUYA?
We’re currently making tests with Toto Temple, see what we can do with it, but our next “big” project is probably going to be Burrito Bison Revenge. We still haven’t started development yet, so nothing is set in stone, but that’s what we have in mind at the moment.

A JUICY BEAST BONUS – More from da’ guys behind Knightmare Tower:

Jared
OUYA Developer Sidekick

Jared

OUYA Developer Sidekick

Similar Posts

Developer Spotlight: NIMBLEBIT

DevLog: RGCD – From Atari to OUYA

T-3 Days to Launch

Spaktor

Bring Toto Temple on ouya! That game looks super fun

FourEyedGeek

Hi guys,

Knightmare Tower is the first game and currently only game I’ve purchased for the OUYA, I really enjoyed it, it is fun and a great way to kill some time. I really like how I can quickly get into a game and if I only have time to launch once, it’s still fun.

It has encouraged me to look into playing more and eventually OUYA games.